Devices for supplying cigarettes on a conditioning machine with two packing lines normally comprise a hopper having a number of outlets for arranging masses of equioriented cigarettes into layers comprising a given number of cigarettes; an ejecting device for successively ejecting the layers from the outlets of the hopper; and a conveyor for receiving the layers and forming groups of cigarettes comprising superimposed layers, and which are then fed to the two packing lines of the conditioning machine.
A cigarette conditioning machine with two packing lines has twice the output of a single-packing-line type and therefore calls for simultaneously forming a large number of groups of cigarettes for supply to the two packing lines. Since the traveling speed of the cigarettes along the outlets depends, however, on the force of gravity acting on the cigarettes and cannot be increased over and above a given limit, increasing the number of groups means increasing the number of outlets for each individual layer, thus resulting in the formation of extremely large, cumbersome hoppers with a large number of outlets.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,106,282 discloses a devices for supplying cigarettes on a conditioning machine with two packing lines and having a hopper provided with four outlets. In this supplying device a batch of cigarettes is extracted from a respective outlet and is fed to a respective pocket of an intermediate conveyor by a relevant "U" shaped slide. Successively, the intermediate conveyor is moved so as to position the pocket with the batch of cigarettes in front of a relevant packing line in order to feed the batch to such packing line.
However, the supplying device disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,106,282 is relatively complicated, thus expensive, and cumbersome. Furthermore, the reciprocating movement of the intermediate conveyor does not allow the supplying device to work at a relatively high operating speed as required by the modern double-lines cigarette packaging machines.